Twitter's infrastructure depends heavily on Linux to handle the flood of data moving through its system

The Linux Foundation will announce next week that Twitter has joined the organization, along with open source storage services company Inktank and high-performance data center manufacturer Servergy.

"We're excited to formalize our work with these innovators and to hear from them during this week's LinuxCon and CloudOpen event," Linux Foundation Vice President of Marketing and Developer Services Amanda McPherson said in a statement.

Twitter's infrastructure depends heavily on Linux to handle the enormous flood of data -- 400 million tweets per day, from 140 million active users -- constantly moving through the system, according to Twitter open source manager Chris Aniszczyk.

"Linux and its ability to be heavily tweaked is fundamental to our technology infrastructure. By joining The Linux Foundation we can support an organization that is important to us and collaborate with a community that is advancing Linux as fast as we are improving Twitter," he said.

The Foundation says that a formal announcement will be made on Tuesday.

Inktank is the paid service and support arm of the open source Ceph storage framework, which has been a part of the Linux landscape for years, and is actually a part of the core kernel, according to Inktank President and COO Bryan Bogensberger.

"As the project's advocate and sponsor, Inktank is formalizing its commitment to Linux with its Linux Foundation membership. We are eager to collaborate with developers and business executives from the world's most aggressive companies to meet their growing storage needs today and into the future," he said.

Servergy chairman and CEO Bill Mapp said that rising data center traffic levels make Linux indispensable to his company.

"Linux helps us to deliver on both with top performance-per-watt for our customers. We look forward to continued contributions to the advancement of Linux and being a part of the growing community of top companies, globally," he said.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.